Of course, I consider myself part of the crowd that saw no good reason to change the award in the first place, so no shocker there. But seeing as how I'm in a charitable mood today, I will say it's much better than the Counter-Currents H.P. Lovecraft Prize for Literature bust (faint praise indeed).

"The Outsider must find a direction and commit himself to it, not lie moping about the meaninglessness of the world."
-Colin Wilson, Religion and the Rebel

I like both awards just about equally. The new one has a really nice block of wood.

Funnily enough, they might still be using Lovecraft pins for nominees because there's still so many left over. People were annoyed enough, so they'll probably scrap them.

Listened to a podcast about Octavia recently and its kind of fascinating how badly she wanted to be a bestseller but couldn't stop herself from writing really grim stuff. Can't help but wonder what she'd be writing if she hadn't held back.

It looks much better than the old one to be honest; I always was uncomfortable with how grotesque it was, especially for a representation of someone who was so self-conscious about his percieved "ugliness".

Nooooooo the new one is sooooooo generic. I mean, I'm fine with them replacing the Lovecraft head - because it's an award, and why not. But this is about the most middle of the road idea they could have come up with. It could be some random town council award for Good Citizenship, or a forestry commission award for services rendered to natural conservation...or an award for best indie rock album or something...who knows?

Middle of the road is pretty generous. To me it looks more like something sold alongside the incense and glass pipes in a truck stop souvenir shop...

It is pretty, but, unsurprisingly, they played it safe, following the politically correct guidebook down to a tee (or should I say... to a tree?). They took out all possible meaning out of the award. I mean, it could also be seen as an attempt to reproduce Iron Maiden's Fear of the Dark cover or the year's best arborist award.

Your fall should be like the fall of mountains. But I was before mountains. I was in the beginning, and shall be forever. The first and the last. The world come full circle. I am not the wheel. I am the hand that turns the wheel. I am Time, the Destroyer. I was the wind and the stars before this. Before planets. Before heaven and hell. And when all is done, I will be wind again, to blow this world as dust back into endless space. To me the coming and going of Man is as nothing.

For a while it seemed like Charles Vess (I like him) was going to create the new award, and there was some ideas about a person touching a wall covered in fingerprints. There was a bunch of people saying it's best that the design shouldn't be based on any real person in the genre.

It's not easy to represent a genre in a small sculpture. I really don't know what I would have done. Maybe just a much gnarlier tree. Most awards don't look that exciting anyway.

A gargoyle would have been good. Better than the wall covered with fingerprints (typical Asian horror cover) or that moon-tree. What about this?

If they want to be environmentally conscious, a bonsai like this would be nice too.

"So in the end it remains advisable to accept whatever comes, to behave like an inert mass even if one feels oneself being swept away, not to be lured into a single unneccesary step, to regard others with the gaze of an animal, to feel no remorse, in short to crush with one's own hand any ghost of life that subsists, that is, to intensify the final quiet of the grave still further and let nothing beyond that endure." ---Franz Kafka, Resolutions

I prefer the Lovecraft one on an aesthetic level, but I still don't get why whatever this award looks like is a big deal.

It's mostly the nature of the argument against the previous award. Folks were against the usage of H. P. Lovecraft's image for the World Fantasy Award because Lovecraft was racist...and that was it. There really wasn't any deeper thought or discussion as to why Lovecraft was chosen for the award's image in the first place, or what Lovecraft contributed to the field, or whether or not the award in any way celebrated or promulgated his racism. Rather than actually address the issue the World Fantasy Award folks decided to retire the award.

So a petition largely pushed in ignorance prompted a response that was pure cowardice. Now it's a tree.